Vegetable Marrow Jam

Margaret Heagney

Margaret Heagney 21st July 2017 Deerpark Social Services Centre, Ballinasloe, Co. Galway

Vegetable Marrow Jam

Interviewer: Clare Doyle (CD)

Interviewee: Margaret Heagney (MH)

CD: And your mother could make the brown bread and tarts?

MH: Oh we never bought bread. Oh the bread…she used to make it on the pan, so it was nice and thin. It didn’t have a lot of dough in it, so I didn’t mind that so much.

CD: Right

MH: ‘Twas nice

CD: You liked the thin bread?

MH: Oh I did, it didn’t have much dough and you’d have butter and you’d have jam.

CD: Would you make our own jam or would you buy it?

MH: Oh, made all, you bought nothing. You made all your own jam.

CD: What kind of a jam now, would you make?

MH: Well, the most thing we used to have was vegetable marrow jam. We used to grow them ourselves.

CD: Alright.

MH: My mother would keep the seed out of the marrows and she’d sow them in little pots. She’d go out in the garden then and dig a little corner and plant them…

CD: And who…

MH: The marrows would come…they’d be that size…

CD: Yeah, I was going to say, they’d be big

MH: Yes, oh very big

CD: And what, would she boil them then after that?

MH: No, no it would … we’d clean them and peel them and clean out the insides and cut them up into small little pieces. And I can’t remember was there sugar put on it. It was left overnight and it would be flowing with water…

Cd: Right

MH: …next day, and that was out into the pot and out over the fire and we’d be told, “stir that, stir the jam”

CD: And that would be your jam made then in a couple of hours?

MH: Yes! She’d put the jam then into the press, we’d have all kinds of jam, every kind, everything she could get

CD: That would be nice on the bread?

MH: T’was for the bread, yes,

This page was added on 07/08/2017.

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